Coffee Nursery

You’re looking at over 100,000 coffee plants. They will all go in the ground in 2019 at Montecarlos.

We stopped by this outdoor plant nursery late in the afternoon. You can see the sun getting ready to set behind the trees in the background. I couldn’t believe the scale of this. Can you imagine? 100,000 plants? Each one will be transported to the correct spot on the volcano. Each will have a hole dug. Each will be planted, and watered, and fed. Then as they grow they will be pruned and taken care of. 100,000. And that’s just 2019.

While most coffee farms in El Salvador are literally shutting down (more on that later) Montecarlos is planting 100,000 plants. He’s able to do that because coffee drinkers in the US and other countries around the world are willing to pay more for his coffee than for commodity coffee. When you ditch blended coffee and drink pourover you get to taste the volcano in your cup and let your $ support planting these seedlings.

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6 May, 2019: This gentleman was manning the weight station. Trucks are used to transport coffee berries from the mountain to the processing facility. When the trucks arrive they drive up to a full truck scale that is weighted. This weight is used to confirm the amount of berries that are being brought to the processing plant. Read More

8 May, 2019: Carlos has 3 customers. George Howell. A former employee of George Howell. And Starbucks. Starbucks doesn’t blend coffee from Montecarlos. It’s part of a program they have to bring super premium “black apron” coffees to some of their cafes around the world. (Recently it was sold in Tokyo Starbucks for about $30/ lbs. It’s sold out.) Pretty… Read More